Dueling Research: The Great Small Business Social Media Stand-Off
Now I’m really confused.
I was sitting there sipping my morning coffee, searching through the “usual suspects” websites – Ad Age, Wall Street Journal, Promo, Brandweek and others – looking for ideas that might help our clients, or inspire a blog post, or just make me a little smarter
8:49 AM: At BtoB I saw this headline: “SMBs Adopting Social Media As A Key Marketing Tool.” I learned that “Small and midsize businesses are aggressively using social media to promote themselves” and “45% also have a presence on Facebook and Twitter with the express intent of promoting their businesses.”
9:50 AM: Same day, second cup of coffee, still searching. On Bob Bly’s Blog I spotted this headline: “Small Business Says Social Networking Doesn’t Work.” Interesting, I thought, as I read that “more than three out of four small business owners have not found social networking sites to be helpful in either generating new business leads or expanding their businesses during the last year.”
Hey! This contradicts what I just read!
Who should I believe? The BtoB article reported on a survey 2400+ selected small businesses by Internet research company Internet2Go and social network MerchantCircle. Bob Bly’s post was a response to a Marketing Charts report on Citibank telephone survey of small businesses.
• I’ve always enjoyed, respected and usually agreed with Bob Bly’s take on marketing, especially his recurring demand that social media marketing demonstrate some kind of measurable, meaningful business results.
• As far as I know, Citibank has no stake small businesses using or not using social networks for marketing. But MerchantCircle may have such a stake, because it’s a social network for small businesses.
• On the other hand, Greg Sterling makes a very good case for why MerchantCircle/Internet2Go’s research trumps Citibank’s.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The mark of a first rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
I guess my mind is not first rate. I’m really confused. Won’t you please comment, and help me make up my mind?
Tags: Bob Bly, btob, business to business, research, small business, social media, social network marketing
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 am and is filed under Fred Petrick, social media. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses to “Dueling Research: The Great Small Business Social Media Stand-Off”
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I haven’t seen the full Citibank study but they suggest by implication that 24% of businesses have found some value in social media.
Here’s the bullet from the release:
“76 percent have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year”
It’s curious that they worded it that way, almost as though they were making an argument that social media aren’t used or useful for SMBs.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Sounds like some veterans of political spin doctor polling have found their way into the legitimate research arena. But then again any marketer with more than a few years under their belt knows that how a question is asked (or when or how it is worded) can guide the response in the desired direction.
I agree with Mr. Sterling that it is curious why they would word the question that way. If the true, it proves again that Friends, Fans and Followers don’t necessarily equal customers.
February 21st, 2010 at 10:48 am
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